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Everyone is busy and most family cooks find it daunting to produce three meals a day. With a full-time career, I end up spending a lot of time on weekends prepping and preparing food to be available for brown bag lunches and for quick meals on busy evenings. I confess that we end up eating out more than I care to admit. I just prefer to be served than to be the server. I also get tired of my own cooking. Once I accepted that eating out is part of our "normal," I decided to focus on eating out for less. Here are some of my tricks. Feel free to add your tricks too.

When you are behind on your debt payments, every ring of the phone can fill you with dread. While there is no magic wand to make your debt disappear, there are some steps you can take to protect your rights when dealing with a debt collector.

This is our BS1 to BS7 story previously shared in the old forums. I was forced to recreate it from scratch and have taken this opportunity to provide more detail and move the story forward from where it “ended” in the original version.

The purpose of telling our story is to inspire others.

We started our Total Money Make Over with our first budget on December 1, 2008, but I feel like I should provide a little background so you’ll know where we were coming from.

Until 2006, I was working for the same automotive finance company that I had started with out of college in 1991. In August
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I have a secret envelope, and it is hidden in a special place. At one point last year, this envelope had $2,500 in it. The money that goes into it does not come from a paycheck or tips from a part time job. The money in this secret envelope comes from selling items we no longer need around the house.

This envelope is my envelope. I get to choose where to spend the money. It has funded some really nice things
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Cleaning supplies have gotten very fancy, convenient, and disposable. In spite of that, I still don't enjoy cleaning. It got me wondering why I was spending so much of our budget on these fancy items when it really did
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I want to share a cautionary tale to all the parents out there who are sheltering their children from choices, that sooner or later, they will have to face, and even more so, from the consequences of those choices. This cautionary tale is mine.

My parents never made a lot of money, but they were both post-Depression children, born in the 1940's. They lived on very little growing up. My paternal grandparents lost a house in the 30's, during the height of the depression. My maternal grandparents
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If you are new to Debt Free Fanatics, and want to learn more about techniques for getting out of debt, we encourage you to register and participate in our forums. Our members have been managing their money for years and are happy to offer advice and instruction on how you can manage your money better and get out of debt.